Walmart buys Jet.com for $3b to compete with Amazon

[poofyhairguy]

It wasnt that bad a purchase. Amazons market cap is 365 billion on 130 billion in revenue. Jet was 3 billion on 1 billion revenue. Not that far off a ratio, but i would rather have the dividend increased.

When the 15% off coupons are gone so is that $1 billion revenue.

 

[Nashemon]

Jet.com shows up in Google Shopping for me occasionally. I've clicked through once or twice months ago, but I had concluded they were shady and decided not to do business with them. Something about their site always set off red flags in my mind. I can't recall the particulars anymore. Kind of just wrote them off. I was surprised to hear the positive things the news was saying about them when Wal-mart bought them. Blows my mind.

 

[GobBluth]

I feel like this is a poor investment on their part since Amazon is a god among mere e-commerce mortals.

 

[jlee]

link

Anyone purchase from Jet.com? They've had a 15% off for new customers, but their goods offered isn't nearly as complete as Amazon. Its also a much different business model from Amazon:

Once. They sent me the wrong item, and when I contacted them about it they weren't able to get me what I actually ordered (no longer in stock/available). Not impressed.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

Walmart had to do something eventually to get serious about online sales. Their site sucks bad. .

Their site sucks bad and the way they operate sucks bad. Doesn't matter if you fix the site without fixing the underlying problems. Jet is going to wind up sucking too because Walmart will make it suck. If Walmart had any intention of getting serious about online sales they could have done it at any point in the past 20 years. They have the capital and the buying power to be a force in online sales and they have still managed to not make a dent in the market. This doesn't change anything.

 

[Zee]

all walmart needs is a better web development and logistics team. wow the brainiac behind this must have not heard of the internet

 

[Miramonti]

I don't understand how this is different from getting a piece of the transaction from third party sellers competing with the best price.

 

[OutHouse]

American here who spends thousands of dollars online shopping annually. Never heard of Jet before this news broke.

me either, i thought the OP meant Walmart bought the black only Jet magazine.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Many times I've ordered something from Amazon that arrived messed up and they refunded my money on the spot without requiring me to return the item. I love buying from them because of the great service I've received from them. I buy everything from clothes to computer parts and I've even bought shocks and struts from them as well. Not so long ago I got rotors and brake pads for my escape for a fraction of the price they would've cost me locally.

 

[Leyawiin]

http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/08/technology/walmart-jet-deal-amazon/index.html
Here they expound upon the concept and customers can save more money by buying even more items at a time and doing things like waiving their right to return products to Jet in return for even lower prices.

No, its waive "free" return shipping, not waive returns.

 

[MarkXIX]

I too believe that Jet.com was little more than a setup to get bought out by a Walmart or Target who still can't get their online business together to compete with Amazon. Some employees and investors just made some money today and they don't work for Walmart.

 

[Miramonti]

Once. They sent me the wrong item, and when I contacted them about it they weren't able to get me what I actually ordered (no longer in stock/available). Not impressed.

I'm guessing you jumped on a deal that many others did, which cleaned them out, as the pricing was an inventory dump to begin with.

 

[mrjminer]

I used them for some computer parts around when they came out. Never again. Long story short, you are screwed when it comes to shipping. The real sellers (ie: not Jet) use whatever shipping method / restrictions they want, such as requiring a signature, no redirecting to a local facility for pickup, etc. and you have no control over it. I had to drive like 70 miles round trip to pick up some CPU fans that UPS couldn't leave at my residence, and would not redirect to a local UPS store due to a shipper restriction. I also had to contact Jet 3-4 times to get an issue fixed where a shipper literally shipped the item from their own warehouse to their own headquarters instead of shipping it to me. This was all in the same order, with the issues occurring with two different vendors on the same order (order had three different items, all three ended up coming from different places, the only one that I didn't have an issue with was the one that was fulfilled by Newegg).

The two "vendors" that were problematic both had very bad reviews across the board on multiple different websites and should have never been used by a reputable company. Fuck Jet.

 

[Puffnstuff]

You know amazon has a great list of prime movies and music which I also enjoy that adds value to their service.

 

[ultimatebob]

all walmart needs is a better web development and logistics team. wow the brainiac behind this must have not heard of the internet

Actually, I heard that Walmart is going big into cloud computing with the new OneOps initiative. One nice thing about what they're doing is that it's all open source, so you can borrow from it for your own cloud rollouts.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Walmart probably doesn't have a choice but to shorten their logistics lines to shave costs. Depending on their cloud provider their service can scale depending on the load to save money versus having a fixed cost system. During ebbs in business it can scale back down to the lower level rather than remaining at the higher load capacity all the time without the business to support the cost. I'm hoping that it will lead to better service when ordering from /Walmart. They've always come through for me but the time involved was much higher than with other retailers.

 

[Kazukian]

Website search is terrible. Descriptions are terrible. Sorting results is non existent If you know exactly what you're buying you can price check, but many times, I can't figure out exactly what I'm ordering. Did get some nice deals with the coupons, but without the coupon discounts, really not worth the hassle to figure out what I'm buying from them. I really don't understand why Wal mart couldn't reverse engineer their business model with all their clout in the marketplace.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Going cloud lets them outsource to a 3rd party so they don't have to incur the associated infrastructure costs. If they used a provider like HP who uses on demand scaling they'll be set. Walmart's search feature is so outdated that it often times returns the wrong items in the results. All too often I've searched for a particular item and was then bombarded by irrelevant results.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Placed an order with Jet.com last week for a video card. Using their first time buyer 15% off promotion, they were about $1 cheaper than Newegg(including shipping fees) but I bought from Jet.com b/c I could return the video card within 30 days(Newegg only return for replacement). Well, this weekend, Newegg had the card on sale for $15 cheaper plus another $25 off for using Masterpass by Mastercard. So, I ordered from Newegg and got that package from NJ, yesterday.

Well today, the video card from Jet.com comes today and it's in a Newegg box. I didn't know Newegg was a trusted partner of Jet.com. Well, I just went thru the return process and printed the return label which was easier than Amazon and didn't realize that return shipping was free. An interesting experience and I saved $40.

edit - outside of the better deal I found on Newegg, my experience was pretty positive. They offered free returns on the video card, after placing the order they showed a timer and gave me 30 minutes to cancel and when I went to perform the return, it only took a couple of clicks.

 

[pcslookout]

Be careful with jet.com there warranty on some computer hardware is only 30 days and not years like the manufacturer says. No this is not the return policy I got confused with.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Note to self: Never buy a single item from there again.

Well, maybe if it's a net loss for them. Outside of that, screw it - I'm willing to pay $5 - $10 more and go with a better competitor.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Their site sucks bad and the way they operate sucks bad. Doesn't matter if you fix the site without fixing the underlying problems. Jet is going to wind up sucking too because Walmart will make it suck. If Walmart had any intention of getting serious about online sales they could have done it at any point in the past 20 years. They have the capital and the buying power to be a force in online sales and they have still managed to not make a dent in the market. This doesn't change anything.

That's because they never are and never really had that competitive of pricing. It always befuddles me when people go out of their way to do shopping at Walmart - such as going to a further Walmart rather than a closer grocery store chain.

Their selection sucks as far as overall variety - especially if you want anything quality - and last time I was at a Walmart their prices weren't in anyway lower than other places. Majority of items were more than the Target that is by my house. Same goes for groceries. Their entire customer base are just mindless zombies that are too stupid to fathom that other places sell items - and they might actually be cheaper!.

 

[FelixDeCat]

I've shopped directly from Walmart.com several times from chairs to air filters, etc. Very reliable, trust worthy and dependable. Free store pickup works for me!

I would use Walmart.com over Amazon any day.

 

[Puffnstuff]

I bought from jet a few weeks ago when I needed to get some Braun shaver cartridges. Being a new customer I was able to stack discounts bringing the cost for each down to a fraction of what Amazon was charging plus I got free shipping. I'm me loyal so whomever provides me with the best product and price gets my business.

 

[Kaido]

Tried them once. Got a good deal. Shipping was a bit long, tracking was a bit weird. Stuff showed up missing parts. Had to deal with customer service. Had to wait for missing parts to arrive to finish installation. Have not used since.

Amazon ships me my crap in two days & takes it back if I have any issues. Their CS has always been pretty great for me. No games.